Stephen Colbert + Critical Role = Dignity
Stephen Colbert plays D&D with Critical Role to benefit Red Nose Day. You can watch here. He has a scar and his hair is mussed… and he brought Narsil and Sting!
Lord of the Rings as a game of Dungeons & Dragons
Lord of the Rings‘ plot is clarified as a transcript of a bunch of people playing Dungeons and Dragons. “Starts with a long, low-level adventure of just getting out of The Shire and getting the ring to Rivendell. DM originally prepped a low-level hobbit campaign for their roommates […]
What Looks Like Chaos
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”-Albert Einstein I am an orderly person, but I don’t love order for its own sake. I find beauty and happiness in […]
Mordor on the Western Front
At the New York Times, Joseph Loconte discusses “How J. R. R. Tolkien found Mordor on the Western Front.”
“The Myth of the Medieval Setting: Masculinity and Heroism in Modern Film”
Friend of the Gutter, Kate Laity writes about medieval settings, ideas of heroism and masculinity, and “how people use history to veil the way they think about how things are now.”
Catharsis denied: when fiery doom is an anti-climax
When I was about 12, my parents took me to see a stage version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings performed with life-sized puppets. As Frodo was agonizing over pitching his precious ring into the fiery pit of Mount Doom, Sam, exhausted from the epic journey but […]
The Cultural Gutter 